


reflecting pool

by bespectacledwallflower



Category: Helix Waltz (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2019-12-26 15:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18284708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bespectacledwallflower/pseuds/bespectacledwallflower
Summary: a gift for my wife emma about her fat crush on miss foggy[dress_taylor_swift.mp3]





	reflecting pool

Magda Ellenstein thought she'd been taught to move with an air of grace, but she did not realize what natural grace looked like before meeting Foggy. Ladies needed to learn grace by walking with books on their heads and other such silly training exercises, but Foggy was wholly self-possessed in the elegant movements of her body, which seemed to hover just above the ground. Magda could never find the right descriptor for Foggy's way of motion, either--it wasn't so dramatic as  _sashaying_  or  _sauntering,_ but she also could not call it  _walking_  and do it justice. She wanted terribly to dance with Foggy, though she knew the real result would look more like Foggy dancing around her...but that would be just as good, if not  _better._

She contemplated all this while coming down the hill into Finsel's slums, where all the rickety buildings leaned against each other like tired laborers, to see Foggy's squat table and watched her talking to a customer. Foggy would sell low to the ground, seated on a worn length of fabric that would have been too sumptuous in its heyday for its current purpose. The customer seemed bent on out-negotiating her enough to rouse Foggy to her feet and assert her prices were fair for the quality and rarity of her product, but Foggy did not let anger stiffen her shoulders. She jutted one hip out widely to the side and pointed the opposing leg in a straight line, arms crossed over her chest. It would have looked affected and ridiculous on Magda, but the attitude sat well on Foggy's round hips, and Magda found herself captivated by the line of Foggy's body as she approached the table from behind. She almost did not want to make her presence known, just to be allowed to look without embarrassment for a while longer. Unfortunately, the customer singled her out to beg for sympathy.

"Would you ever pay as much as Foggy charges for a pair of gloves, miss?" He had a snub nose that he wrinkled in displeasure.

"I would. I have, in fact," said Magda, coming out of her trance. She owned a pair of the very gloves in question, royal blue fingerless things with a band of fishnet webbing near the opening.

Foggy turned at the sound of her voice and smiled fondly, sidling up to Magda and winding an arm around her waist. Foggy replied to the man, but looked only at Magda, a feline squint to her smiling eyes.

"She has. She buys more from me than anyone else."

Magda widened her eyes. "Is that true?"

"I would never lie to my best customer." Foggy turned back to answer to the irritated customer, holding the sample pair of gloves limply in his hand. "If you won't get these gloves, I'm sure she will for the price  _I_  charge. I don't haggle. I won't go any lower."

The man tossed the gloves back on the table and walked away in anger, definitively outpriced. Foggy brushed off the lost customer like a bug off her arm and turned her full attention to Magda again, still cozied up close to her. Magda wasn't sure what to do with her hands, and she imagined every eye in this street corner was on them.

"How are you? I feel like you haven't come to see me in such a long time," Foggy said in that way she sometimes did with difficult customers, and with Magda when she wanted to make her blush. Magda would imagine Foggy dipping her words in honey, pushing them into Magda's mouth with insistence that _you must eat; nobody ever eats my food but you, dear Magda, and it makes me so happy to see you enjoy it._

Magda held her own--Foggy said that to her all the time. "I came last week! You wanted me to wear something new of yours and said it would be ready next week. So here I am."

Foggy stepped back and lifted her arm from Magda's waist, which Magda missed immediately. "You're right, I did say that. I didn't want to bring it with me and risk someone trying to buy it off me. This is special. Maybe just for you."

A custom design _exclusive_ to Magda? She warmed with the pride of the intimacy the gesture implied and spoke breathlessly. "Where is it? When can I see it? You still haven't told me what it even _is!_ "

Foggy seemed on the edge of laughter. "Come to my house to try it on. Not now, but after sundown. I'll make you dinner, if you like."

Though it would be pointless, Magda would politely refuse. "Oh, you don't need to feed me, Foggy--"

"It's no trouble. You've never seen my house, have you?" Foggy asked.

"No," Magda replied, feeling like an echo to Foggy's own voice, the watery reflection of Foggy's own face in a pool. _What does she see when she looks at me?_

* * *

Foggy gave her directions Magda was sure she would not be able to follow, but intuition seemed to guide Magda's feet as much as the landmarks through the ramshackle alleys of Finsel's back end. The sky grew narrow and the dark of evening crept in sooner here than in her own wealthy suburb, people already lighting their lamps before the sun went down. Magda would be early, but she feared going through unfamiliar streets in full darkness. She maneuvered through the tenements with laundry dripping dry on lines hung from building to building in the mounting twilight, the half moon hanging in the slice of deep sky above her head. It saw her safely to Foggy's door--or rather, entrance, with a dense fabric curtain hung to keep drafts from crossing her threshold. Magda hesitated, unsure where or how to knock. Better to just call her name.

"Foggy? Are you home?"

A distant voice wove its way under the curtain. "Magda, you're too early!"

"Sorry, I can come back later if--"

"No, come in!"

The incense smell which always hung on Foggy's sleeves filled Magda's nose when she pulled aside the curtain. Foggy's entry was very dark and Magda's eyes took a moment to adjust, but soon she acclimated to the low light of the small den. There were many more patterned fabric swaths hung on her walls--Magda wondered what colors they were in sunlight--and many small candles scattered about on the floor, lending the room an all-over glow from beneath. The same low table Foggy used as her storefront sat surrounded by colorful cushions, and an ornate ceramic spewed incense smoke in a waterfall. Besides these articles, the room was bare, but Foggy appeared through another curtain in the rear doorframe carrying a folded bundle in her hands, and Magda was glad that there was more to the house than this space.

"I didn't mean to disrupt your plans," Magda apologized again, and the hung tapestries seemed to absorb her words.

Foggy flashed a sultry smile and shook her head. "You _are_ my plans. We'll just have to wait before we can eat. But it's better this way; you can try it on with an empty stomach first."

She unfurled the bundle to reveal a long ivory gown, and Magda's eyes shone at it. It was so delicate that Magda felt it might slip through Foggy's steady fingers, and even in the low light, the fabric glistened with an opalescent sheen. She approached cautiously and glanced up at Foggy-- _may I?_ \--and Foggy nodded her approval. Magda took the dress in her hands and held her hand up under the fabric to find it nearly transparent. She flushed with excitement.

"It's beautiful...I'm afraid to destroy it."

"Don't worry, I'll help you put it on." Foggy gathered up the gown into her arms again and prompted Magda when she stood there, looking confused. "Go on."

"Here?"

"No one will see us."

Magda wasn't worried about that, but Foggy would certainly see _her_. She hated that her heart beat so fast as she disrobed (and Foggy watched without looking away once, her face pleasant but unmoving), but it picked up pace doubly when Foggy shook her head at Magda down to her shift and corset.

" _All_ of it has to come off. The dress is too fitted for underclothes."

Magda's hands fumbled on the front hooks of the corset, and Foggy covered them with her own, the dress suddenly draped over one of her shoulders.

"Do you want my help?"

Foggy's voice did not often betray her true emotions--Foggy's emotions felt as inscrutable to Magda as the signs Foggy interpreted for fortunes--but she asked with such tender concern Magda felt a sharp pinch in the back of her throat. She nodded yes, and Foggy pulled the clasps apart with one deft motion, letting the corset drop to the floor at their feet. A soft cue from Foggy and Magda lifted her arms over her head so Foggy could pull off the shift, and Magda was left with nowhere to hide.

Foggy stopped and drew back, and Magda felt her own nakedness expand and deepen under Foggy's eye as it traced her frame. She did not like to think of her body if she could help it, as impossible as her position made that subject to avoid. She could never tell what others saw in her body, what they wanted to do to it or see on it, and losing that control felt as inevitable as the end of all things. If she could just interpret Foggy's intentions, see if she _ought_ to be getting a thrill from being seen utterly by her, then she could accept surrender to her gaze with gladness.

"Good," Foggy mused, her voice warm yet distant. The voice of a contemplative, forever beyond Magda's reach. "It should fit you perfectly."

The gown had more complex rigging than Magda had initially perceived. Each piece could be mounted by itself and built upon to create the whole gown. Magda grew slowly accustomed to Foggy's touch as she worked, lacing her into the bodice, buttoning up the high neck, and attaching the fitted undersleeves and lacing them shut. She could neither see nor feel hardware or stiff support fabric within the gown--it had to be there, but it was barely noticeable against the skin, and Magda noted how the selective seams did not work against her shape, but moved with it. The dress was fully assembled, but she felt no less naked until Foggy brought forth an open robe with massive sleeves to complete the look. The hem dragged all the way to the floor and past, mingling with the train of the gown in a pool of silk. Foggy pulled the strings in each sleeve to ruche them up and posed triumphantly with her hands on her hips, satisfied with her work.

"There."

Magda held up her arms to watch the fabric hang below her hand, feeling very elegant in the billowing sleeves. "It feels so luxurious."

"It's a very rare silk. Hard to get, hard to work with, but it looks marvelous on." Foggy put a hand to her chin. "Come to think of it, you can't get the full effect in here. Follow me."

Foggy pushed through the rear curtain and Magda shuffled behind, afraid she would catch the trailing hem on one of the candles on the floor. On the other side of the curtain spread a narrow hallway with a creaky wood floor that led to the kitchen on one end (from which streamed a wonderful stewing smell) and another curtain on the other. Foggy went through this curtain as well, and Magda saw her bedroll in the corner, a long mirror on the facing wall, and the first windows she noticed in the whole house. The moon filled the room with quiet blue light, a stark contrast to the closeness and dim yellow of the den.

Foggy took Magda's shoulders and turned her to face the mirror, resting her chin in the bend of Magda's neck. Magda finally understood the dress when she saw it on her body: she was an ivory tower with the robe on and a sculpture with it off. Though long, the dress had high, high slits up either side for a split-skirt effect that did nothing to diminish the display of her whole body as it was, without great modification or disguise. In the den, Magda could see the warm oranges and golds in the fabric, but here in the moonlight she could see its blues, the same blues as the veins in her wrist and in her irises. And Foggy was not looking at the dress, but watching Magda's face in the mirror as she absorbed it.

Magda struggled to break her awe with compliments Foggy deserved. "This is--I can't even describe it. I've never seen anything like it. How did you fit it so well?"

"Call it intuition," she said, still pressed to Magda's shoulders. She pulled back the robe and tossed it, rather unceremoniously, on her bedroll. "It looks very well without the robe, too."

Magda stopped her breath as Foggy ran her hand down the side of the gown, somehow pulled perfectly to her curves without strain. "You know, Foggy...I didn't believe people for the longest time when they said you were a witch. But this is what convinced me."

Foggy hummed. "So the fortune-telling had nothing to do with it."

"Well, yes, but _this_ is magic." Magda paused. She was so happy Foggy was alright keeping her head on her shoulder. "Does it bother you when people call you a witch?"

"No. Does it bother you to be seen with one?" Foggy snaked her arms around Magda's waist, and the whisper-light weight of the silk seemed to magnify Magda's sensory response to the touch she felt through it.

"No."

Magda wished she wasn't watching herself speak with Foggy's breath at her neck. Why did she look so frightened?

Foggy seemed dangerously close to kissing her here, right where her pulse beat loud as a knock in the middle of the night. "Not very wise of you, Magda. But you pay me a great compliment."

Magda was bursting to ask a thousand questions, and at last one escaped. "Why me?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've seen everything. You could go anywhere and have anyone you wanted. And we've never talked about it..." They'd never really _touched_ , not like this, before tonight. "Why invite me over and make me this beautiful gown? I just--don't understand what you see."

"Of course you do. I know I'm not the only person who cares for you," Foggy said, and Magda could see a strange resignation in Foggy's eyes. "And if you don't feel the same, I understand. But I didn't think you would come tonight if you didn't."

Foggy did not move, but her hands froze, tensed, ready to pull away if Magda should wish it. But Foggy was right--on some level, Magda knew and just could not comprehend it. She assumed her own unworthiness too quickly. Magda put her hands over Foggy's and yielded to the touch at last, shifting some of her weight back into Foggy as counterweight to Foggy leaning upon her. She closed her eyes so she didn't have to watch herself do it in the glass, an element almost as intimate as the gesture itself, but Foggy caught her.

"Focus, Magda," she warned, teasing, in a voice that could make Magda lose her mind. Foggy lifted a hand from her waist to turn Magda's eyeline back to her own form in the mirror. "Don't look away."

From the moment she saw the dress, Magda suspected Foggy made it just to be taken off.


End file.
